


Terrible Ideas Are Our Specialty

by Penknife



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Post-Dragon Age II, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: In which Hawke is brooding about the mess they've left behind them in Kirkwall, and Fenris is (just barely) managing not to say "I told you so."
Relationships: Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Terrible Ideas Are Our Specialty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



They're sprawled in the cabin below decks, everything swaying as the ship rocks on the waves. Above, Isabela is doing various nautical things in apparent reasonably high spirits. She seems to feel she's personally acquired a happy ending. At least someone feels they've come out of this debacle well. Hawke suspects that Isabela's cheer might distract him from thinking about Kirkwall, but moving feels like more trouble than it's worth.

Fenris props up on one elbow to frown at Hawke. "You're still thinking it's your fault."

"How could you possibly guess? Wait, don't tell me, you're secretly a mage."

Fenris bares his teeth at Hawke in something between a smile and a snarl, but doesn't threaten to stab him. That's probably a mark of deep and abiding love. "It isn't your fault."

"Thank you for that extremely generously meant lie."

Fenris breathes a laugh. "I'm not kind. I'm just right."

"So you've pointed out," Hawke says. Fenris said Anders was an abomination. Fenris said Anders was a menace. Fenris said mages were the reason that they couldn't have nice things. Fenris is managing by obviously heroic efforts at self-control not to precisely say "I told you so."

That's probably also a mark of affection. Hawke has always been good at reading affection into his friends' willingness not to do their absolute worst to him. _But you did_ , he wants to say to Anders, the wound still aching and deep. _You did it to me. Doing it to Kirkwall was doing it to me._

Fenris now seems at a loss for words, probably because the unspoken "I told you so" is taking up so much conversational space in the room. He spreads one hand across Hawke's chest and then moves it lower, and while that suggest an obviously distracting activity, Hawke isn't sure he wants to be distracted at the moment.

He catches Fenris's hand to stop him, and Fenris extracts his hand carefully from Hawke's grip. Somewhat to Hawke's startlement, Fenris reaches up to stroke Hawke's hair, raking his fingers against Hawke's scalp in an uncertain motion, as if comforting someone is a strange language only half-remembered.

"What are you thinking?" Fenris asks, and there are so many easy jests on the tip of Hawke's tongue, but all of them turn to ashes in his mouth.

"That it was my fault."

Fenris's fingers tangle in his hair and tug. "You're impossible."

"You genuinely think that you have room to talk?"

Fenris breaths another humorless laugh. "You're a more patient person than I am."

"I'm sorry, am I boring you?"

"You aren't," Fenris says, sounding frustrated enough that Hawke knows that what he's actually doing is worrying Fenris. Which is one more thing for him to feel guilty about. He's doing so well. "Orsino and Meredith wanted a fight."

That's a more temperate explanation of recent events than Hawke would have expected from Fenris, and Hawke tries to appreciate that. "And we cleverly managed to provide."

"That was Anders," Fenris says, so apparently they've stopped not talking about that.

Hawke waits for Fenris to say the things that it is, under the circumstances, actually reasonable for Fenris to say. _I told you so_ is really the least of it. Instead, there's a fairly long pause. He can hear Isabela issuing some sort of order above decks, her voice carrying, and then the warm sound of her laughter. It's not that he thinks she doesn't care about what happened in Kirkwall. It's that he thinks she has even less idea than Fenris of how to express that, and her idea of helping is whisking them both out of the city and away from the flaming mess behind them.

"I think we helped," Hawke says, because there's enough blame to go around.

"You tried to help him," Fenris says. "He was too angry to listen."

Hawke runs one hand lightly down the line of Fenris's back. Fenris has, historically, spent a lot of time too angry to listen. "Or Justice was."

"You know that's why possession is a bad thing, yes?"

"I can't say that ended well, no." If he's honest with himself, he should have known for a long time that things wouldn't end well for Anders. And yet—he used to be fairly certain that things wouldn't end well for Fenris, either, or for that matter for himself, and here they are, comfortably sprawled in this warm bed on a good friend's ship, rapidly leaving the scene of their most recent disaster. It's a better ending than he would ever have predicted.

"It's not your fault," Fenris says again, and puts his head against Hawke's shoulder, seeming genuinely comfortable at rest there. It's possible that Hawke has also done one or two things right. He tries to appreciate that.

Hawke closes his eyes. "Even though you told me so?"

"I could have been wrong," Fenris says. There's a long pause. "I wasn't. But I could have been."

The cabin door opens, and Isabela leans in. "Are you two ever planning to get up?"

"Actually, I was planning to earn my keep on this voyage as ballast," Hawke says.

"He's brooding," Fenris says, sitting up cross-legged, seeming entirely comfortable with Isabela seeing him practically naked. Hawke finds himself less jealous than bemused.

Isabela takes in the view with appreciative interest, and then shrugs one shoulder, her smile slipping away. "Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don't."

Hawke thinks it's that simple, in her book. Of course, that's a book that's gotten her in incredible amounts of trouble over the years. "You would know."

"I would," she says, not sounding offended. "Now get out of bed, I have an idea for a profitable little excursion, but it's not an actual plan yet. I need you to help figure out the plan."

"This is going to be a terrible idea," Fenris says.

"You don't know that."

"It's always a terrible idea," Fenris says, but he sits up and reaches for his trousers.

"You're in luck. Terrible ideas are our specialty," Hawke says, and sets about dressing to find out what their next terrible idea is going to be.


End file.
